New Hand on Deck

Today marks the debut of our newest crewperson, Jim Bowman, and we're pleased as punch to have him aboard.

Jim's a former reporter and religion editor for the Chicago Daily News and columnist for the Trib. He's also written a number of books on corporate histories as well as two on religion: Priests at Work: Catholic Pastors Tell How They Apply Church Law in Difficult Cases and Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics.

No kool-aid drinker, he. Jim himself is an ex-Jesuit who's now married and is a father of six who's spent a fair amount of time fighting their miseducation in the Oak Park (IL) school system. He's best known on the blogosphere as the gadfly known as Blithe Spirit who regularly catches a wee bit of liberal bias at Chicago Newspapers, The Blog. He'll keep the blog open for business (he'll certainly never run out of material), and we'll link to it on this page under "More From Our Crew."

You don't mess around with Jim. Word up.

Although he writes that he has not yet achieved his goal of becoming a superlative human being, he seems A-OK by me. We're sure you'll enjoy his sharp pen and good cheer, and to Jim we offer a warm and hearty welcome, matey.